Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The
Speaker 1: Weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from
Speaker 1: this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. Katie. It's
Speaker 1: a full Crack reunion because we are thrilled to be
Speaker 1: joined in our third seat by the best selling author
Speaker 1: of books like John Dies at the end Zoe punches
Speaker 1: the future in the dick if this book exists here
Speaker 1: in the wrong universe and the new Zoe is too
Speaker 1: drunk for this dystopia, which I believe you can pre
Speaker 1: order still. Yes, he is also one of the hosts
Speaker 1: of the podcast Big Feats, which, if I'm reading this
Speaker 1: Paris Review article correctly, is the only Mountain Monsters podcast
Speaker 1: officially endorsed by Big Feet. He's our former coor Cracked,
Speaker 1: co creator of the Cracked podcast. Welcome back to the show,
Speaker 1: Jason Pardon.
Speaker 2: Now, is it okay for me to do my fake
Speaker 2: Italian accent that I do? Sometimes? I don't know, I
Speaker 2: realize there are some accents that are inappropriate to keep.
Speaker 3: I mean deeply as as a one non Italian person
Speaker 3: living in Italy, I'd be deeply offended.
Speaker 2: Okay, then I won't because it's one that's so much
Speaker 2: fun that I don't know if I'm doing an actual
Speaker 2: Italian accent or if I'm doing a Hollywood accent of
Speaker 2: actors who themselves were in no way Italian but just
Speaker 2: and did not have a language glos here it's like,
Speaker 2: what are you breaking my balls?
Speaker 1: Yes, there it is there.
Speaker 3: It is the concept of Italian accent is immigrants from
Speaker 3: Naples who came to the US, and that's it.
Speaker 1: And Chris Pratt's interpretation of Mario. Those are the two
Speaker 1: kind of key texts, the cornerstones.
Speaker 3: He's a national icon in Italy. Actually people don't think that,
Speaker 3: but like Chris Pratt Poplar.
Speaker 1: All right, Jason, how are you doing? Where are you
Speaker 1: coming to us from? Undisclosed?
Speaker 2: Sure, I'm in the state of Tennessee. If you want
Speaker 2: to try to find me, I'm sure. There's there's one
Speaker 2: guy on TikTok who can locate anybody just from any
Speaker 2: photo they take. If you want to show up at
Speaker 2: my house, I'm sure you can do it.
Speaker 1: But it has he do it, like even if you're inside,
Speaker 1: he can do it.
Speaker 2: Well, probably not but if you're standing like just in
Speaker 2: your yard, he will take the sliver of sky behind you.
Speaker 2: He can identify exactly down to your address, and that's
Speaker 2: his whole his whole bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's crazy and terrifying. Katie is coming to us
Speaker 1: from Europe, not Italy.
Speaker 3: Though, this time from Barcelona.
Speaker 1: Hey, well well done on the pronunciation key it's bart Yeah,
Speaker 1: now that feels like it should be offensive.
Speaker 3: It probably is. Yeah, Okay, you know I'm in for it.
Speaker 1: What is something from your search history that's revealing about
Speaker 1: who you are?
Speaker 4: The very last search that I did just last night
Speaker 4: was quote the Winter Palace Wikipedia, the Tsar's ancient palace.
Speaker 4: It is the setting of a show on Hulu called
Speaker 4: The Greats, which is why I was googling it, and
Speaker 4: I went in a deep dive on Russian history, which
Speaker 4: is always hilarious, just like the show. I'm amused by
Speaker 4: the buffoonery of our friends from Russia.
Speaker 1: I don't know the story that well, what was what
Speaker 1: was going down in the Winter Palace?
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 6: Where?
Speaker 7: What wasn't going down in the Winter Palace? Jack?
Speaker 5: Am I right?
Speaker 7: Scott chess bump.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well there is one.
Speaker 4: There wasn't anything especially great about the Winter Palace Wikipedia article,
Speaker 4: other than the fact that apparently two I think it
Speaker 4: was two hundred thousand people died building. It seems like
Speaker 4: which seems like it's like.
Speaker 1: That seems like a whole city.
Speaker 7: I don't know, but did you see it? Pretty fucking
Speaker 7: worth it, you know what I'm saying. It looks pretty good.
Speaker 4: I don't remember been now more in it, and.
Speaker 7: They maybe could get more of those little onion domes
Speaker 7: everyone seems to love.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, no, the onion domes. Those are classic. That's
Speaker 4: classic Moscow. This is Saint Petersburg. Baby, I know I've
Speaker 4: never been. I've never been to Russia. I studied Russian
Speaker 4: in college and sucked at it and then stopped.
Speaker 1: But ever still language. You study Russian language?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Wow, the accent on that is not great here.
Speaker 4: I was expecting you to be like it was fantastic.
Speaker 4: I gotta I gotta tread carefully, Sophia. Are you from Russia?
Speaker 7: I'm from but I'm fluent in Russian. Yeah, that's my
Speaker 7: first language.
Speaker 4: Do you know my favorite word in Russian is no
Speaker 4: what kaladilnik.
Speaker 1: It means refrigerator. At least that's what I remember pretty cool.
Speaker 1: That's a good word.
Speaker 4: So I'm listening to an audible, a two volume biography
Speaker 4: of Joseph Stalin ship not a very nice gentleman, Joseph Stalin.
Speaker 7: Wait, really, you're like my fucking grandpa was like, those
Speaker 7: are exactly the fucking things that would absorb him for hours.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's it's it's absorbable. It's absorbed me for eighty hours. Now,
Speaker 4: can check it out. Yeah, and there's one left left
Speaker 4: to come. It ends on a cliffhanger. Guys, Hitler's about
Speaker 4: to invade the Soviet Union, so I can't wait for
Speaker 4: three it's.
Speaker 7: Gonna work out.
Speaker 1: Well, I think they're going to be.
Speaker 4: I think there's gonna be a lot of unhappiness for
Speaker 4: decades to come. But yeah, I think that that that
Speaker 4: particular invasion things work out.
Speaker 7: I think Hitler, that guy is just like a flash
Speaker 7: in the pan. Like not to ruin it for you,
Speaker 7: it's just it's not I.
Speaker 1: Mean, it kind of was, but you have like a
Speaker 1: brief rise. By the way, I feel like you shouting
Speaker 1: out Russia's word for refrigerator, I feel like the English
Speaker 1: language where like the English language really went off on
Speaker 1: the word refrigerator. That's pretty good like that. I feel
Speaker 1: like maybe maybe there was like a Cold War competitiveness
Speaker 1: that was happening there. But refrigerator is yeah, I kind
Speaker 1: of like it. That's a cool word. Yeah. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a brand name or something like. It sounds like
Speaker 1: it was workshopped, right.
Speaker 7: It sounds like it has a motor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 5: What I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Do you think just sounds like it makes cold?
Speaker 4: Well, that's what it means, right, It doesn't mean cold
Speaker 4: or something.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but I just mean I feel
Speaker 7: like refrigerator doesn't make you think of cold. It makes
Speaker 7: you think of motor. Yeah, keeping it.
Speaker 1: Cold, frigid, throwing frigid in there, which is a good
Speaker 1: evocative way to word for cold. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think they really I think they saw what Russia
Speaker 1: was doing and was like, we got we gotta do
Speaker 1: better than ice chest. I think was what they called it,
Speaker 1: ice automatic ice chest.
Speaker 7: Ice chest has like a chalice vibe.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah it does.
Speaker 7: You know, like I'm gonna sit on my ice chest
Speaker 7: with my jealous of mead. My favorite Russian word borgia.
Speaker 7: It is how you say ladybug. And it means God's
Speaker 7: Little Cow, and I'm obsessed with it. My favorite isn't
Speaker 7: that the cutest thing.
Speaker 5: You've ever heard? Are you just are you just dying
Speaker 5: right now?
Speaker 7: Because I'm dying every time I think about it.
Speaker 1: God, Yeah, look at that little guy. So fucking cute
Speaker 1: and also not gendered the way that I guess it is.
Speaker 1: It is because cols are girlies. Yeah, never mind, I'm
Speaker 1: against it. God's Little cal is so cute.
Speaker 7: I always thought that, like, if I was gonna like
Speaker 7: be somebody that opened like a I don't know, like
Speaker 7: a kindergarten or something, that's what I would call it.
Speaker 1: God's Little Cow.
Speaker 7: Be like that is the cutest. All of the kids
Speaker 7: are gonna go here.
Speaker 4: That's amazing, like a preschool, a Ladybug Ladybug preschool. But
Speaker 4: there's probably many of them, so it really works. I
Speaker 4: think it's a great name.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, Scott.
Speaker 1: Scott. What is something you think is overrated? Massages? Massages?
Speaker 4: I do not like giving massages, and I do not
Speaker 4: like receiving massages, and they make me feel intensely uncomfortable,
Speaker 4: and the fact that so many people love them so
Speaker 4: much is a total mystery.
Speaker 7: To me, have you ever had a good one.
Speaker 4: I think I've had some some good ones. Yeah, like
Speaker 4: on my honeymoon and expensive couples massage and like grease
Speaker 4: or whatever that we paid lots and lots of money for.
Speaker 4: I found it uncomfortable and akin to torture the entire time.
Speaker 7: Well, money's not really how you judge it, because anyone
Speaker 7: can just be like, oh, you're in a hotel, fucking
Speaker 7: pay me a thousand dollars to touch you. That didn't
Speaker 7: come out right. But I just kind of want to know,
Speaker 7: do you get like the light kind, do you get
Speaker 7: the deep kind? And do you think when they touch
Speaker 7: you it's like too much pressure or too little or
Speaker 7: do you just not like people touching you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's all of the above. I've tried more
Speaker 4: than once. I've had the light massages. I've had those
Speaker 4: deep tissue massages that leave you feeling ill for days.
Speaker 4: Like anytime they warn you ahead of time, like oh, hey,
Speaker 4: this is this is gonna you're gonna just feel sick
Speaker 4: and stuffed up for the next forty eight hours because
Speaker 4: we're gonna rub so many toxins out of your flesh
Speaker 4: and send it forcing through your your system, out of.
Speaker 7: Your nose and drink a lot of water.
Speaker 1: So they do tell you that.
Speaker 7: I'm not no one, no one ever does myself included.
Speaker 7: And then you're like, oh, why do I feel that nice?
Speaker 7: I'm like, well, bitch, they told you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like to go from massage directly to just
Speaker 1: drinking a giant a train to of a cold brew.
Speaker 7: Oh my god, you're the healthiest. That's how the voice
Speaker 7: came around, and that's why I sound like this, Scott.
Speaker 7: I think it's bold of you to admit that you
Speaker 7: hate massages, because I think a ton of people do,
Speaker 7: but they won't say anything because they're like, people think
Speaker 7: I'm insane. It's like when someone says they don't like
Speaker 7: wacam on.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean it's a little more selfish to say
Speaker 4: you hate giving massages. I think that's probably more, you know,
Speaker 4: for that total you're a master.
Speaker 7: I was going to come back to this podcast for that.
Speaker 4: What's what's like? What is it a massage giving? What
Speaker 4: is what is like? When is it okay to be annoyed?
Speaker 4: Like how many minutes?
Speaker 7: Because you can feel it, You can feel when the
Speaker 7: person giving it is annoyed, so it's always done bad,
Speaker 7: even that three minutes that they give and I'm like,
Speaker 7: you know what, take your fucking lobster ass hands out
Speaker 7: of here. I don't this pity massage.
Speaker 1: They're just giving like mitten style massages, four figures together
Speaker 1: and then.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the fucking zoidberging my fucking neck.
Speaker 5: I don't want that.
Speaker 7: Fuck that, Scott, is that your style to do a
Speaker 7: bad job?
Speaker 5: So you're just out of there.
Speaker 4: I mean, I try my best, but I promise it's bad.
Speaker 4: That's I mean that no matter what I'll do, I'll
Speaker 4: give it my absolute awe and will still disappoint and
Speaker 4: then the annoyance will will come through. So I mean,
Speaker 4: maybe that's at the heart of why I don't like them,
Speaker 4: because I've never really had a good experience, either as
Speaker 4: a giver or a receiver. But no, it's just not
Speaker 4: it's just not my thing. Are you an expert massage giver?
Speaker 7: Would you say, yeah, I'm awesome. I have the hands
Speaker 7: of a cossion worker, but the gentleness of an angel of.
Speaker 1: One of God's little cows.
Speaker 5: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like giving and receiving. I was complimented in
Speaker 1: the past year that I received massage well from somebody,
Speaker 1: and I took that. I was like, I didn't know
Speaker 1: I needed to hear that about myself. But it really.
Speaker 4: Possibly mean other than making noises really receptive noises.
Speaker 5: Being like that is the spot. How did you know.
Speaker 1: The person? Growner jack. Yeah, it's an nicest.
Speaker 5: Way to say you're a.
Speaker 1: Vocal Cross's really sweet. She gives uh, my wife and
Speaker 1: I massages and she I think she just likes us
Speaker 1: and so she like comes up with ways to compliment us.
Speaker 1: But like that, You're right, it doesn't make sense to
Speaker 1: like have a for that to be a skill that
Speaker 1: somebody has. But I totally took it to heart. I
Speaker 1: was like, yes, did she.
Speaker 4: To your wife?
Speaker 1: Yeah, she loves my wife. I mean she's given my
Speaker 1: wife every single compliment in the world.
Speaker 7: Maybe she's running out and that's why she's like this
Speaker 7: massage your husband.
Speaker 1: I don't know, did a good job taking a massage
Speaker 1: from me?
Speaker 5: She's taking a massage?
Speaker 7: Sounds like so Dommy like yeah, yeah, of hers like
Speaker 7: yeah you take that massage?
Speaker 5: Good?
Speaker 1: You take that, don't you?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Exactly?
Speaker 1: What is something you think is underrated?
Speaker 5: Popsicles? I've been obsessed. I so I bike everywhere in
Speaker 5: the city and that's how I get around, and it's
Speaker 5: very humid. I know you were you guys were saying
Speaker 5: that someone a previous guest had said summer was overrated,
Speaker 5: and I and I agree, it's very human here and
Speaker 5: I'm biking everywhere. And when I get home, I want
Speaker 5: a popsicle immediately. And I just found these new popsicles.
Speaker 5: They're they're They're not sponsoring me. They're just Halo tops
Speaker 5: pineapple popsicles. They're so good, They're so underrated. I ate
Speaker 5: a whole box and one night, two nights ago. Wow,
Speaker 5: I'm just obsessed with popsicles right now. So I think
Speaker 5: they're deeply underrated and everyone should be eating popsicles all
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 6: Such a ringing endorsement. Now, are these halo pops are
Speaker 6: they especially?
Speaker 5: Is they're like.
Speaker 6: Coconut milk mixed in there? Or is this just like
Speaker 6: pure pineapple flavor?
Speaker 5: I think it's just pure pineapple. It's like it says
Speaker 5: like only forty calories per popsicle, And I'm like, how
Speaker 5: how they taste so good? How is this possible? Yeah,
Speaker 5: they're del by some of these.
Speaker 6: I was looking at Rocket pops is doing like some
Speaker 6: kind of advertisement for a new video game. But every
Speaker 6: time it comes on, I'm like it was the last time,
Speaker 6: Like a rocket pop, Like those things used to rule
Speaker 6: my summer because that's usually you gave whatever is in
Speaker 6: like the little plastic and they're like blue, pink, green, whatever,
Speaker 6: and those are good. They're tasty, they're cold. If you
Speaker 6: get a rock a pop, you're balling. Somebody has paid
Speaker 6: you to mow their lawn. You have gone fat in
Speaker 6: the house who's rich and you're just really living high
Speaker 6: on a rocket top. Like I'm an adult, I have
Speaker 6: one of these one ever, I gotta reinvest in my childhood.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think. I think popsicles maybe is a smaller
Speaker 5: thing for what I'm really saying is underrated, which is like, yeah,
Speaker 5: absolutely doing the things as an adult that you wanted
Speaker 5: to do as a kid, and being like I can
Speaker 5: do this anytime. I want to know, a whole box of
Speaker 5: popsicles in a night, Absolutely, Yeah, I did that.
Speaker 1: Have we been improving on popsicles? Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: we have like the the Halo Top Pineapple pop popsicle,
Speaker 1: like the again Halo Top, Like doesn't I think they're
Speaker 1: lying to us but at least we feel better when
Speaker 1: we're eating their ice cream and frozen treats.
Speaker 5: There's also good pop and then make like a mango
Speaker 5: chili pop and like a watermelon a gave pop and
Speaker 5: those are also like very good and supposedly healthier for you.
Speaker 6: So yeah, Total Wine is making margarita pops and I
Speaker 6: have just transcended to another earthly plane. They're eighteen dollars
Speaker 6: with the tequila in them. Or let me see hold on,
Speaker 6: let me see the variety path. There are gluten free
Speaker 6: children give that they got a mango margarita, pineapple, strawberry
Speaker 6: and lime does contain alcohol made with real tequila?
Speaker 5: Wow, all I freeze that. Though I don't understand that
Speaker 5: scientifically cut.
Speaker 6: Water frozen margarita pops, I don't know, but I want
Speaker 6: to purchase these.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Every time I've tried to, like do the homemade popsicles like,
Speaker 1: they don't turn out they're like more icy than I
Speaker 1: feel like the ones that you buy in the store.
Speaker 1: Like there's two. I feel like there has to be
Speaker 1: like some sort of concentrate, like it has to be
Speaker 1: concentrated juice er mm hmmm.
Speaker 6: You know what makes the best homemade pops Jack kool Aid.
Speaker 1: Kool Aid does I feel like it's very watery, not
Speaker 1: if you had extra powder to so you just go
Speaker 1: extra yeah, yeah, got extra.
Speaker 5: Hard on it.
Speaker 6: And then you pour them in a dixie cup, right,
Speaker 6: and like maybe about halfway stick your popsicle in, freeze
Speaker 6: the whole cup, and then you just like pop it
Speaker 6: out of the plastic.
Speaker 5: It's old school and it's delicious. That sounds good. I'm
Speaker 5: gonna have to do that.
Speaker 1: Popsicles are great. All right, Well, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break and we'll come back and talk about some news.
Speaker 1: And we're back and Ted Cruz, I think we've talked.
Speaker 1: We've checked him with him before on his journey of
Speaker 1: trying out his catchphrase of kiss my ass. Like there
Speaker 1: was a point where he said my and my pronouns
Speaker 1: are kiss my ass, which I think he stole from Roseanne,
Speaker 1: like a Roseanne stand up special. Sounds sorry, but he's
Speaker 1: back trying to differentiate himself, make people care what he
Speaker 1: has to say, and so earlier in the week, he
Speaker 1: shared a video of a cop car knocking down an
Speaker 1: environmental protester who was blocking the road to Burning Man,
Speaker 1: with the caption play Stupid games win stupid prizes, so
Speaker 1: seemingly he's in favor of cars mowing down peaceful protesters
Speaker 1: and also implicitly is a fan of people flying private
Speaker 1: jets to an event that has a literal orgy dome,
Speaker 1: because that's what they were protesting, as people flying private
Speaker 1: jets to burning Man. But somehow that wasn't his cringiest
Speaker 1: move this week. So recently, the director of the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism said in an interview
Speaker 1: that the group could hypothetically one day adopt Canada's recent
Speaker 1: health guidelines recommending that adults should consume no more than
Speaker 1: two alcoholic drinks per week. That there's no they Canada
Speaker 1: did not say you go to jail if you drink
Speaker 1: more than that. They just said, we would suggest that
Speaker 1: it is healthier if you drink this much as opposed
Speaker 1: to more than this much. And then the person from
Speaker 1: the US made this just loud, unwavering statement, he said,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not going to go up. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure with regards to like the alcohol guidelines. So if
Speaker 1: alcohol conception guidelines go in any direction, it would probably
Speaker 1: be toward Canada. And that is what the right has
Speaker 1: seized on and been like, no, you will take these
Speaker 1: beers out of our cold, dead.
Speaker 5: Hands unless it's bud light.
Speaker 1: Unless it's bud light, which case they're cool. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so then he went on this news Matt. So he
Speaker 1: goes on Newsmax and does just the most performative act
Speaker 1: of beer drinking from anyone that's not a fourteen year
Speaker 1: old at their first house party. He's just I don't know,
Speaker 1: he just seems so uncomfortable, and he's like talking shit
Speaker 1: about how they don't want you to use house fans
Speaker 1: or ceiling fans. And then he's like, and if they
Speaker 1: want us to drink two beers a week, frankly, they
Speaker 1: can kiss my ass. And then he cracks open a
Speaker 1: cold one, and then there's like these cowboys behind him.
Speaker 1: Did you guys see the video. He's like in a
Speaker 1: barn with like six cowboys standing behind him holding beers also,
Speaker 1: and then when he takes a sip of his beer,
Speaker 1: like they take a sip of their beer, but it's
Speaker 1: like very quiet, like they do it all very quietly,
Speaker 1: like nobody makes a sound, so it's all just like solid,
Speaker 1: like men drinking in a dark room is the vibe
Speaker 1: which terrifying yeah, terrifying, and also like probably, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to be like nobody has a drinking
Speaker 1: problem here, Like just all these guys silently drinking in
Speaker 1: a dark room like with just the weirdest vibes ever,
Speaker 1: is probably not not the thing you want to go for.
Speaker 1: But it's clear.
Speaker 6: Alcohol it is meant to be consumed quietly with no talking, yes.
Speaker 1: And then the anchor is like, well, haha, you said it,
Speaker 1: Ted gonna, I'm gonna crack a non alcoholic beer here
Speaker 1: due to station policy because I'm not allowed to drink
Speaker 1: alcohol on air. But so that just like made it
Speaker 1: even more embarrassing. And incidentally, the Canadian guideline classified as
Speaker 1: a standard drink twelve ounce serving of five percent alcohol
Speaker 1: beer and he was drinking a Shiner Bock, which is
Speaker 1: four point four So the beer that he's talking about
Speaker 1: wouldn't even count as a drink under the Canadian guidelines.
Speaker 5: That's amazing.
Speaker 6: I think Ted Cruz was having flashbacks to his college
Speaker 6: days of like trying to get into parties and being
Speaker 6: roundly rejected, and he was like, no, guys, I'm really cool.
Speaker 6: Look how I want drink this beer? Like yeah, watch
Speaker 6: me fit in This Is How You Do It right?
Speaker 1: Watch right?
Speaker 6: Yeah, Yeah, he's a that's a character I like. Craig Mason,
Speaker 6: who some people might know as the showrunner of the
Speaker 6: Last of Us. He also worked on the Hangover movies
Speaker 6: back in the day. Was his roommate when Ted was
Speaker 6: a senior and he was a freshman, And he's got
Speaker 6: great stories to still live on Twitter if you want
Speaker 6: to re visit some of.
Speaker 5: Ted's crazy college days. I've seen this thread where I
Speaker 5: can't even remember any specifics, but just how crazy he
Speaker 5: was in college was like, ma'am, there's no way you
Speaker 5: could accept him as like a friend or a normal person.
Speaker 5: But maybe if we had, he wouldn't be here constantly
Speaker 5: trying to get acceptance from everybody.
Speaker 6: A greasy film on everything. My friend Eric dubbed the
Speaker 6: substance cruz. See are uh z rhymes with scuz? Now
Speaker 6: there's cruz on my TV. Craig Mason, January tenth, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5: More delightful stories like that.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also made Chernobyl, which was a favorite of ours. Craigman.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, a good show, very good show.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, just moving down the conservative lineup, we've
Speaker 1: got Rudy Giuliani. So we had covered before that he
Speaker 1: was putting his apartment up for sale, and the price
Speaker 1: point he's suggesting is six point five million dollars and
Speaker 1: so no one has brought it yet bought it yet,
Speaker 1: probably because first of all, it's Rudy Giuliani's apartment, so
Speaker 1: it's like trying to sell a murder house. It might
Speaker 1: have actually like been additive when he was America's mayor,
Speaker 1: but now things are wildly different, obviously, but it's it's
Speaker 1: being listed by the so called broker to the fallen Stars,
Speaker 1: who also had to sell off Bernie Madoff's penthouse. What
Speaker 1: a title, I know. It's just this person is like
Speaker 1: specializes in selling off the homes of people who made
Speaker 1: their millions in Ponzi schemes, and now Rudy Giuliani. But
Speaker 1: people are pointing out that like it doesn't doesn't even
Speaker 1: make sense, Like he's asking for like way more than
Speaker 1: it's worth. Another unit in the same building that's basically
Speaker 1: the same size currently on the market for two point
Speaker 1: eight seven five million, and this is on the market
Speaker 1: for six point five Wow, the last sale in the
Speaker 1: building was three point seven.
Speaker 5: Does he think that like the celebrity boost. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 5: put it there. That's wild.
Speaker 6: It's desperation because he knows he's has giant legal fees
Speaker 6: coming up. There's no money coming in from anywhere. Everybody
Speaker 6: who's even halfly intelligent Coutock ties with him, so there's
Speaker 6: no I know, Trump's not helping him. Apparently he asks
Speaker 6: for some help Trumps like get out of here.
Speaker 5: Well Trump does not money either, so that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Right, I Mean what one theory is that he's actually
Speaker 1: doing that. He's putting his house on the market to
Speaker 1: like show that he is in financial straits and like
Speaker 1: can't pay any of his lawyers or whatever, and like
Speaker 1: I think there's like some legal reasons for that, while
Speaker 1: also like he doesn't want to sell the apartment and
Speaker 1: so he's basically putting it on the market at like
Speaker 1: an irrational like a completely unreasonable listing.
Speaker 5: Will buy it?
Speaker 1: Interesting, Yeah, that's kind of the idea. It's like that
Speaker 1: he wants to argue he's like close to broke in
Speaker 1: order to excuse the fact that he hasn't shared discovery
Speaker 1: documents in the case brought against him by Smartmatic, the
Speaker 1: election technology company that sued him and Fox News in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one over false claims of election fraud and
Speaker 1: that like this way, no one will pay in order
Speaker 1: to have like verifiable proof that you're broke and therefore
Speaker 1: immune from certain legal responsibilities. And so in an earlier case,
Speaker 1: he actually automatically lost his defamation case in which he
Speaker 1: was sued by two election workers from Georgia for failing
Speaker 1: to turn over evidence, and in that case, he was
Speaker 1: also slapped with a one hundred and thirty two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars bill for legal fees. So it's helpful for him
Speaker 1: to be like, I'm in duress. I can't pay all
Speaker 1: any of this stuff. Please leave me, leave me alone,
Speaker 1: Please have pity on me, sir, And it seems like
Speaker 1: nobody's buying it.
Speaker 6: Essentially, it's nice to see people get what they deserve,
Speaker 6: even if it's just so little.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's nice karma.
Speaker 1: I'm really I can't wait to see the behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of the mugshot, like how Trump's mugshot came about,
Speaker 1: but also like what the messaging was to because like
Speaker 1: Rudy seemed to have the same like be tough and
Speaker 1: like angry face as Trump did, but like I just
Speaker 1: want to know like what went into all of those photos?
Speaker 1: Because he also looks just like a a corrupt businessman
Speaker 1: who just got caught.
Speaker 6: And you think they gave him a three to two
Speaker 6: one countdown or I like smile click yeah he heads up,
Speaker 6: or where they're just like and stand here click next,
Speaker 6: like wait, But because I feel like he would have
Speaker 6: tried to, like, I don't know, appear less guilty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they both looked so guilty. He looked really guilty.
Speaker 1: He was giving off like the subtext of his picture.
Speaker 1: The first word in the subtext of his picture is guilty.
Speaker 1: He's just like, Oh, I would have gotten away with
Speaker 1: it too.
Speaker 5: Now, I'm like, has anyone ever smiled in their mugshot pictures?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 6: For sure, Lindsay Lohan, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. There's
Speaker 6: a bunch of like celebrity ladies are constantly like, listen,
Speaker 6: you won't catch me with a bad photo.
Speaker 5: I don't care. Where is this my good side? Okay,
Speaker 5: now book me.
Speaker 1: But in that earlier case, like the judge literally wrote,
Speaker 1: donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a
Speaker 1: public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law,
Speaker 1: this performance has served only to subvert the normal process
Speaker 1: of discovery in a straightforward defamation case and then you know,
Speaker 1: found him guilty and charged him one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars legal fees. So it's not I don't
Speaker 1: I also don't know, like what the theory is that,
Speaker 1: like someone's going to feel sorry for him that his
Speaker 1: six point five million dollar apartment isn't selling. Like that
Speaker 1: doesn't feel a great strategy for making people like causing
Speaker 1: people to feel sympathy for you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, listen, it's all what else could he possibly try?
Speaker 6: It was like, you know, bad housing markets totally, there's
Speaker 6: some people who could empathize with the difficulty there because
Speaker 6: he can't. What are you gonna use like his family, no,
Speaker 6: his job situation. You did that here, rich Wakey.
Speaker 8: What else you got to make empathize? But you try
Speaker 8: to buy my house? That's yeah, it's an interesting strategy,
Speaker 8: all right. And finally, let's talk about the pandemic two
Speaker 8: point zero. This is a new conspiracy theory. You're probably
Speaker 8: starting to see because Trump went on a long rant
Speaker 8: about how left wing lunatics are trying very hard to
Speaker 8: bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates, specifically to steal the
Speaker 8: twenty twenty four election naturally, And yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 8: this kind of came out. It seemed like he came
Speaker 8: out of nowhere, but apparently.
Speaker 1: It's been it's been a thing that's going going around
Speaker 1: for a little while. First of all, I just want
Speaker 1: to note that under the video that he posted on X,
Speaker 1: like the two stories that they're linking off to that
Speaker 1: like disprove his claims are actually like approaching the debunking
Speaker 1: from the perspective of like, actually, Trump's the one who
Speaker 1: started the lockdowns, which I get the logic of that,
Speaker 1: like that even his even somebody who thinks the pandemic
Speaker 1: was like a scam, will be convinced by that. But
Speaker 1: it does just feel like, I don't know, I'm I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm seeing that more and more, just the
Speaker 1: embracing of the logic of like, yeah, well we didn't
Speaker 1: need to go that hard and everybody overreacted right, like
Speaker 1: we can all agree on that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, from folks who seemingly before we're like, oh no,
Speaker 6: I'm definitely like mask on and stuff. It's been weird,
Speaker 6: like a weird turn of events to watch folks be
Speaker 6: like and I'll never go back again, and I'm just
Speaker 6: at a convention. I just still can't understand why wearing
Speaker 6: a mask is seen as such an inconvenience. It's so easy,
Speaker 6: It hardly does anything. It make you spell your own breath,
Speaker 6: which you know is nice. If it's bad smelling, you
Speaker 6: should know, you should you should be aware of what's
Speaker 6: happening in that area of your body.
Speaker 5: It's also great if you're like on the subway and
Speaker 5: you're practicing lines for I don't know, an off Broadway
Speaker 5: show you're about to do in a week, and you
Speaker 5: don't want to look like a crazy person. You can
Speaker 5: put a mask on and no one will be the wiser.
Speaker 5: It's great.
Speaker 6: You're having a bad day, looking not great, throw a
Speaker 6: mask on. Guess what Now you're mysterious. Who's that girl?
Speaker 1: What she's up to?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's honestly such a help. It's weird.
Speaker 6: It's especially knowing that the numbers are going up and
Speaker 6: I really feel like folks are like, I'm not going
Speaker 6: back inside.
Speaker 1: Screw of you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's very funny that, like that's the mindset when
Speaker 5: it's like the opposition none of us wanted to do this.
Speaker 5: It feels like the argument is like someone's planning this
Speaker 5: and they want to do this and I'm never going back.
Speaker 1: It's like none of us enjoyed the lockdown, right, Yeah
Speaker 1: that was not nobody's like pro pandemic. But that is
Speaker 1: like how the argument.
Speaker 5: Is being exactly structured?
Speaker 1: Yeah structured? Is that like we're for so anyways, they're
Speaker 1: like the There's been rumblings among right wing conspiracy theorists
Speaker 1: for weeks now, basically following suggestions from public health officials
Speaker 1: the people who are at higher risk may want to
Speaker 1: wear masks in public following a rise in COVID cases,
Speaker 1: and some colleges and companies, including the movie studio Lionsgate,
Speaker 1: even reinstituted mask mandates Briefly. They are claiming that, like
Speaker 1: a countrywide lockdown is coming this fall, and you know,
Speaker 1: Alex Jones shockingly is responsible for this. He's claiming that
Speaker 1: on August eighteenth, he claimed that a TSA whistleblower informed
Speaker 1: him that mask mandates will return in September, followed by
Speaker 1: a full blown lockdown in December. Called an anonymous Border
Speaker 1: Patrol agent who confirmed the oddly specific claims and said
Speaker 1: that we would imminently return to full COVID protocol of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty twenty twenty one, and then perhaps because this
Speaker 1: is a total bullshit, he also gave himself an out,
Speaker 1: adding that the lockdown may not actually happen because he
Speaker 1: had exposed it on the show.
Speaker 5: Oh that's why think about Jones for saving us all. Yeah,
Speaker 5: another lockdown?
Speaker 1: Crazy, I know, But people on social media kind of
Speaker 1: picked up on his claims, suggesting that the new COVID
Speaker 1: surge was somehow connected to Trump's indictments. So this, this
Speaker 1: is like the social media brain malfunction where like everything
Speaker 1: like there's you just assume like everything is happening to
Speaker 1: the too. This like only two or three people that
Speaker 1: you're able to. It's like main character syndrome of like
Speaker 1: following world events, we're like, oh, well, because COVID's going
Speaker 1: back up, that must be related to Trump being indicted.
Speaker 1: Like you just want to connect to the dots on
Speaker 1: things that have nothing to do with one another because
Speaker 1: your brain is only so big and can only you know,
Speaker 1: hold so much information.
Speaker 6: Oh man, I even know what to say about like
Speaker 6: these conspiracy theorists, who I think when anyone is controlling
Speaker 6: the spread of a pandemic, do you know how it
Speaker 6: would be so epic if somebody could, They're like, Okay,
Speaker 6: dates coming up. I'm going to drop the pandemic right
Speaker 6: here in the same way I drop a music video.
Speaker 6: I'm going to make sure this many people get it
Speaker 6: so that we go into lockdown.
Speaker 5: There's just no possible.
Speaker 6: Conceivable way to start time releasing a pandemic or a disease,
Speaker 6: and then on top of that to then think how
Speaker 6: does this help and or hurt Trump? Right, Like the
Speaker 6: math is a mathing, like either we are insider, we're not.
Speaker 6: I don't know what effect that has on on whatever
Speaker 6: Trump is going, other than maybe it would delay his
Speaker 6: trial for a little.
Speaker 1: Bit, right, Yeah, Yeah, I think the main thing that
Speaker 1: is challenge is a challenge for Trump is that he
Speaker 1: is like the most indicted human being in the history
Speaker 1: of the United States, right, is also trying to run
Speaker 1: for president while while dealing with that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the hubers on that guy amazing, it's wild wild
Speaker 5: and paid a bail Bonceman too.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah. Steve Bannon's podcast co host Natalie Winters went
Speaker 1: viral for posting out of context screenshots of Department of
Speaker 1: Veterans Affairs purchase orders, suggesting that it was proof that
Speaker 1: the US government was buying up equipment for a planned pandemic,
Speaker 1: and the equipment was testing supplies and computer equipment, totaling
Speaker 1: seven million dollars, which is like, to put it in perspective,
Speaker 1: like they spent I think four trillion dollars on the pandemic,
Speaker 1: like across all all of the different things that they
Speaker 1: had to invest in.
Speaker 5: I wish I could just post whatever and be fine
Speaker 5: with it.
Speaker 1: I know that's what they've discovered.
Speaker 5: Truly, Truly, they like the truth is suggestive.
Speaker 1: Right, whatever the fuck you want, and it will be
Speaker 1: so and then so just like it's a it's a
Speaker 1: good study in how these stories kind of happened, because
Speaker 1: then you know it's it. It becomes this thing where
Speaker 1: it's like all these dumb little like one person pointed
Speaker 1: to a suburban target store was putting in more pickup
Speaker 1: only spots in their parking lot. Like so it's like
Speaker 1: all these ridiculous statements being made on various outlets. But
Speaker 1: then The Daily Telegraph published a op ed warning about
Speaker 1: Biden's lockdown plot, citing Biden administrations buying COVID equipment and
Speaker 1: hiring pandemic safety protocol officers not to mention the Return
Speaker 1: of the Mask mandates at the Lionsgate Film Studios in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. So it's like, that's how they launder their
Speaker 1: bullshit from you know, a couple Twitter posts and you
Speaker 1: know what, Steve Bannon's co host says to being in
Speaker 1: an op ed as like, and this is evidence.
Speaker 6: I like that they were like Targets putting in more spots.
Speaker 6: It must mean the pandemic. So listen, Target do that
Speaker 6: because it's so easy to order online and then you're
Speaker 6: not tempted to order inside Target. This Target delivery slash
Speaker 6: pickup is one of the greatest inventions ever. No more
Speaker 6: are you perusing the aisles getting lost in pillows you
Speaker 6: definitely don't need twelve more of. You can just order
Speaker 6: and then they bring it to you, and then you
Speaker 6: can go home with the money you intended to spend
Speaker 6: still your pocket.
Speaker 5: It's beautiful.
Speaker 6: I promise it's not a sign of forthcoming pandemic lockdown.
Speaker 5: But it does feel like it Probably loses Target money though,
Speaker 5: because then you're not spending that money on ten pellows
Speaker 5: you don't need. It probably hurts Target a little bit.
Speaker 6: But also I'd consistently coming back, so I don't there
Speaker 6: you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it lowers the friction. That's what they call like
Speaker 1: the difficulty of buying something if you just like go
Speaker 1: hit the button, show up, and someone arrives and puts
Speaker 1: it in the back of your car.
Speaker 6: I will say, whatever AI is operating their system to
Speaker 6: you has gotten pretty good at being like, hey, this
Speaker 6: is on sale. You could just add this to your
Speaker 6: cart right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well that's the other thing like they've perfected, like
Speaker 1: the AI and the you know, web design and all
Speaker 1: the things for like our little skinner box you know,
Speaker 1: smartphones that we all live basically live inside, so that
Speaker 1: they can sell you more. And actually that's what our
Speaker 1: next story is about out, which is kind of the
Speaker 1: reason that Taco Bell and a bunch of other companies
Speaker 1: want to go cash lists. So yeah, let's let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break and we'll come right back and talk
Speaker 1: about that. And we're back, and just a few things
Speaker 1: I wanted to hit so like that. There is this
Speaker 1: one experiment where they figured out people who were particularly
Speaker 1: susceptible to placebos, and they then like during the course
Speaker 1: of a experiment, gave them a thing that like blocked
Speaker 1: the opioid receptors in the brain. And the placebo effect
Speaker 1: cut off, which.
Speaker 3: Means, I mean it's that's super weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird, but it's basically it makes sense when
Speaker 1: you realize when you think about the fact that, like
Speaker 1: the brain is like its own pharmacy. It's creating the dopamine.
Speaker 1: You know, the like add medication and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: or you know, they're illegal drugs that cause your brain
Speaker 1: to like make more dopamine that like make you feel
Speaker 1: even better. But your brain is creating its own dopamine
Speaker 1: on its own schedule.
Speaker 3: My brain is my favorite dealer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your brain is its own like drug dealer slash pharmacist.
Speaker 1: And you know that, then doctors get involved when like
Speaker 1: it's not doing the job that it needs to do.
Speaker 1: But you know that what is happening in like that,
Speaker 1: This study would suggest that what's happening when people experience
Speaker 1: the placebo effect is that your brain is producing the
Speaker 1: actual chemical that the medication is supposed to be producing.
Speaker 1: It just didn't need the medication to actually be in
Speaker 1: the pill to get you to to to get the
Speaker 1: brain to do the thing that your body kind of
Speaker 1: knows it needs in that moment. So I mean, from
Speaker 1: that perspective, like being susceptible to placebo is such is
Speaker 1: such an amazing like superpower where it's just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: my body and brain can just like make these medications for.
Speaker 3: Me, right, And it's not I think it's important to
Speaker 3: note it's not like gullibility. It being able to get
Speaker 3: the effect of a placebo is not that like you
Speaker 3: are stupid or gullible. There's like a study on seeing like, oh,
Speaker 3: are people who are easily hypnotized also like susceptible to placebo?
Speaker 3: And there was no connection there either. It just seems
Speaker 3: to be a thing that like affects almost everyone in
Speaker 3: terms of being able to you know, benefit or suffer
Speaker 3: from the placebo or no Cibo effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we understand. We understand so little of this because
Speaker 2: listen listening to what you guys say, think about how
Speaker 2: difficult it is to study this, and how difficult it
Speaker 2: is to set up an effective trial that perfectly filters
Speaker 2: out every possibly confounding thing that could be some form
Speaker 2: of placebo or no Cibo effect. This is why our
Speaker 2: mental health medications have barely improved in the last fifty
Speaker 2: years or something like that. It is unbelievably difficult to
Speaker 2: nail down the effectiveness of something like an antidepressant or
Speaker 2: an anti anxiety because again, placebos work really well for anxiety.
Speaker 2: When you have somebody telling you, well, my anti anxiety pills,
Speaker 2: I go work in my garden, they're not lying. Like
Speaker 2: repetitive motion, exercise, sunlight. Those are physical things that affect
Speaker 2: all of those biological reactions to anxiety. They're not being
Speaker 2: a hippie. And you know, I don't you sound like
Speaker 2: a scientologist. We start ranting about how ineffective these medications are,
Speaker 2: but the truth is you get about seven of the
Speaker 2: same effect from a passebo for mild depression because of
Speaker 2: course you do it. You know, if you've got some
Speaker 2: whatever fancy t that's supposed to really you know, to
Speaker 2: calm you down, just the ceremony of making it, and
Speaker 2: given the ceremony of making it, sitting down, drinking something hot,
Speaker 2: drinking it slowly, there's yeah, that can have most of
Speaker 2: the effect of a medication without the terrible side effects.
Speaker 2: The issue is that is such an incredibly dangerous thing
Speaker 2: for people to hear because some people who have very
Speaker 2: severe symptoms, who definitely need prescription medication, they tend to
Speaker 2: be the ones who like, see, I don't, I don't
Speaker 2: need that voodoo. It is incredibly difficult to nail down
Speaker 2: the effectiveness of any of these because, as you just said,
Speaker 2: like that, we even now have doubts about exactly what's
Speaker 2: placebo and what's just no treatment at all. Depression is
Speaker 2: just like a lot of those things we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 2: It cats better and think about all the factors in
Speaker 2: a person's life that can improve their mood. Yeah, it's like,
Speaker 2: we have three months, three months on these sugar pills,
Speaker 2: and my depression went away. Also I got a different
Speaker 2: job and the boss that terrorized me is no longer
Speaker 2: in my life. And also my chronic knee injury stopped hurting,
Speaker 2: so I didn't have the chronic pain weighing on me.
Speaker 2: It's like, which of the four million factors in a
Speaker 2: human life caused your depression to go away? And us
Speaker 2: people who to sound smart, who like to say, well,
Speaker 2: it's all just brain chemicals, it's all just serotonin or
Speaker 2: whatever that is that is boiling it down. That's simplifying
Speaker 2: it so much as to make it.
Speaker 1: Wrong, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like it's true that it's like all
Speaker 3: brain stuff, but your brain responds very well to your environments,
Speaker 3: so environmental things are going to have a massive effect
Speaker 3: on your brain. Like you know, your your general habits,
Speaker 3: what your life is like, what you're eating, what you're doing,
Speaker 3: what you're thinking. All these things just kind of like
Speaker 3: form this like cyclone that can really affect your state
Speaker 3: of mind. It's also really difficult with the studies on
Speaker 3: medication for like say, depression, anxiety, et cetera, because the
Speaker 3: like everyone's brain is very different, so the heterogeneity effects
Speaker 3: in these studies are just very hard to compensate for,
Speaker 3: Like a medication that works really well for someone may
Speaker 3: not work at all for another person even though they
Speaker 3: both have depression. Because one person's depression and another person's depression.
Speaker 3: It's not like a you know, simple like disease. It's
Speaker 3: not like a broken bone where it's like, okay, you
Speaker 3: can kind of like the procedure for healing a broken
Speaker 3: bone for one person another person is generally someone similar.
Speaker 3: But for something like depression, it's like you have a
Speaker 3: totally different thing going on from one person to the next,
Speaker 3: given how complicated the brain is and how like broad
Speaker 3: spectrum something like depression is in terms of what's causing
Speaker 3: it what's going on? And I mean the same can
Speaker 3: be said for a lot of like non psychological disorders
Speaker 3: as well, Like there are a lot of diseases where
Speaker 3: it's like, well, treatment for one person seems to work
Speaker 3: before another person does not work at all because their
Speaker 3: bodies are different and their systems are different. So it's
Speaker 3: like a huge challenge in medicine.
Speaker 2: Even if they were genetically the same, which they're not.
Speaker 2: Are their diets different, are their sleep patterns different? Is
Speaker 2: their home life different, is their social lives different? Do
Speaker 2: they have different numbers of friends? All those things can
Speaker 2: impact how your brain works exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean, your brain structure changes over time based on
Speaker 3: your environment. It's not like you're born sort of with
Speaker 3: a baby brain and then it goes like it's genetically
Speaker 3: programmed to turn into an adult brain. Like you're born
Speaker 3: with the very plastic brain that responds incredibly sensitively to
Speaker 3: your environment and what happens to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the two examples that jumped out to me this
Speaker 1: time doing the research on the side of like just
Speaker 1: a straightforward placebo effect, like this is a pill causing
Speaker 1: you to do causing your body to do a thing,
Speaker 1: it's still like the pill color things is still like
Speaker 1: so mind blowing to me. Like they gave a group
Speaker 1: of medical students two new drugs, one a sedative and
Speaker 1: the other stimulant, and like they were given either one
Speaker 1: or two blue or pink tablets, and the tablets were
Speaker 1: all inert they were sugar pills, but the students' responses
Speaker 1: on a questionnaire indicated the red tablets where pink tablets
Speaker 1: tended to act as stimulants, while the blue ones acted
Speaker 1: as depressants, and two tablets had more effect than one.
Speaker 1: And it it's not it doesn't really make sense, but
Speaker 1: like you, you can't boil it down to anything that
Speaker 1: is like happening other than with like meaning like pink
Speaker 1: or red means like hot or danger, and blue means
Speaker 1: like cool and quiet, and right.
Speaker 3: Blue means cool ranch stritos. Red means flame.
Speaker 1: And hot nacho cheese. Yeah exactly. And that's why I
Speaker 1: wake up, to get wake up in the morning, I
Speaker 1: eat nacho cheese and to go to bed and I
Speaker 1: eat cool ranch.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I can give you an example even without an experiment.
Speaker 2: I know people who will drink an espresso or drink
Speaker 2: an energy drink and while they're drinking it, we'll talk
Speaker 2: about how wired they are, like, oh my gosh, it's
Speaker 2: hitting me. Well, it takes forty five minutes for caffeine
Speaker 2: to enter the bloodstrain. Yeah, that's you. You drinking the
Speaker 2: red Bull, and after two gulps is like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: I can feel it hitting me. It's like it's like
Speaker 2: you didn't inject it into your vein. You drink it.
Speaker 2: It has to be absorbed into your system. But that
Speaker 2: spasibo effect, you know, And if you if you felt
Speaker 2: that that soon, you just told yourself. So think about
Speaker 2: did you need the energy drink at all? If you
Speaker 2: can talk yourself into bouncing off the walls because you
Speaker 2: thought that, oh my gosh, the whole eighty hole milgrams
Speaker 2: of caffeine has slammed into my system, which by the way,
Speaker 2: is not very much. And I personally believe making the
Speaker 2: can big and with a big, loud, stupid name like
Speaker 2: C four bomb sickle and it's got like a stick
Speaker 2: a dynamite on it, I think that helps the placebo effect.
Speaker 2: I think you drink a big, bombasting can of something,
Speaker 2: it's like, man, that's going to hit me like a
Speaker 2: freight train. I think it can have it could be decaf,
Speaker 2: and I think it would hit you mostly the same way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want an energy drink that's just called brain
Speaker 3: bone or juice.
Speaker 1: Your brain is gonna fuck so hard. And then the
Speaker 1: other example that's kind of in the other direction was
Speaker 1: they looked at the cause of death between China, these Americans,
Speaker 1: and randomly selected group of white people in California, and
Speaker 1: it was found that Chinese Americans, but not the white people,
Speaker 1: will die significantly earlier than normal if they have a
Speaker 1: combination of disease and birth year, which Chinese astrology and
Speaker 1: medicine consider ill fated. And so it's you know, Chinese
Speaker 1: Americans whose deaths were attributed to lymphatic cancer and if
Speaker 1: they were born in Earth years and consequently were deemed
Speaker 1: by Chinese medicine like especially susceptible to diseases involving lumps,
Speaker 1: not nodules or tumors, had an averaged death age like
Speaker 1: four years younger than people who were not born in
Speaker 1: one of those years. And no such you know, difference
Speaker 1: existed among the group of white people. So it's just
Speaker 1: and that was true across like I don't know the
Speaker 1: ins and outs of what Chinese medicine believes and like
Speaker 1: what the different year meanings are, but like it just
Speaker 1: it feels like very strongly determined by like meaning and
Speaker 1: like the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves and
Speaker 1: that like we like exist within and so I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's I find that one like kind of hopeful in
Speaker 1: a way because like you can I don't know, like
Speaker 1: tell yourself stories and like sort of free yourself from
Speaker 1: some of the stories that we tell ourselves that it
Speaker 1: can be damaging about ourselves. Like like what there was
Speaker 1: also a study where they told people the truth. They
Speaker 1: were like, this is a placebo effect study, and like
Speaker 1: the truth is that like placebo effects have been shown
Speaker 1: to like help people, and like that it had clear
Speaker 1: like positive results just by being honest, which I always
Speaker 1: thought like an important part of the police Cibo effect
Speaker 1: would be the lying. But yeah, apparently not, which doesn't
Speaker 1: really make sense to me.
Speaker 3: But like rituals I think can really have a strong effect.
Speaker 3: Like you put the pill in your mouth and you
Speaker 3: swallow the water, and even if you know it's a placebo,
Speaker 3: you've still done the ritual in your body. You may
Speaker 3: still have sort of this like connection to the ritual
Speaker 3: and feeling better. So it's you know, it's like if
Speaker 3: you've ever found like a calming routine, like some kind
Speaker 3: of meditation routine or calming routine that you do, like
Speaker 3: once you sort of get into the typical position that
Speaker 3: you're in, that it's like, well, I start listening to music,
Speaker 3: I sit on the couch or something. Once you practice
Speaker 3: it and do it a bunch, it works better. Like
Speaker 3: meditation or calming yourself down, like works better once you've
Speaker 3: practiced it, because once you start to do it, you
Speaker 3: make the association between like, well, once I when I
Speaker 3: light this candle or listen to this music, I start
Speaker 3: to feel calm. And then it's like, even though you
Speaker 3: know it's not like medicine, yeah, you've come to associate
Speaker 3: the ritual with feeling better, but yeah with the with
Speaker 3: the that study on like the zodiac or wait is
Speaker 3: it zodiac?
Speaker 1: Yeah, che medicine like right, It's it makes.
Speaker 3: Me think about when we when someone has a disease
Speaker 3: and they're given a time frame for like how much
Speaker 3: longer they have to live. I've always had mixed feelings
Speaker 3: about that because on one hand, I think it's good
Speaker 3: right to like prepare people for like, hey, you know
Speaker 3: you have terminal cancer, so you might want to like
Speaker 3: prepare and get your affairs in order and all this.
Speaker 3: But having a time frame in a way also seems
Speaker 3: like you are kind of potentially negating any kind of
Speaker 3: like placebo effect of like, well if I can like,
Speaker 3: you know, like maybe this thing will kill me eventually.
Speaker 3: But then if you feel like, well, I'm definitely going
Speaker 3: to die in like a year or X months, I
Speaker 3: wonder if that has an effect on how long you
Speaker 3: actually have. It's not to say that the diagnosis is
Speaker 3: incorrect or that's something like terminal cancer you can just
Speaker 3: think your way out of, but there is something on
Speaker 3: the margins in terms of like how healthy you are
Speaker 3: and continue to be based on your mind frame. Right,
Speaker 3: So it's like, I don't think you could beat a
Speaker 3: terminal diagnosis through some kind of placebo effect, but I
Speaker 3: could imagine your quality of life and your length of
Speaker 3: time left could be affected by whether you feel completely
Speaker 3: doomed or not within a certain period of time.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I think you stumbled on a big, big thing in
Speaker 2: our society, which is, for example, to me, it is
Speaker 2: not surprising at all that yoga cures all sorts of things.
Speaker 2: You're stretching, it's you've got to a room to see
Speaker 2: the silnd or with white noise, or with music. It's
Speaker 2: something you often do in a group where a bunch
Speaker 2: of people all doing something in sync. You know, we
Speaker 2: humans are social animals. That has its own benefit. It
Speaker 2: does not surprise me that that helps cure all sorts
Speaker 2: of things. None of us stretch enough and just. And
Speaker 2: it's also its exertion. You know, it's very strenuous. If
Speaker 2: you've never done yoga before, it will kick your ass.
Speaker 2: You don't. It's not just stretching like it's holding difficult positions.
Speaker 2: But part of yoga is that there's a religion around
Speaker 2: it basically, and it's all of this stuff that I
Speaker 2: know is on scientific about Well, this stretch will release
Speaker 2: any financial stress in your life, because financial anxiety tends
Speaker 2: to store in your hips. Yeah, you've got to realign
Speaker 2: your chakra. You've got to the mystical spiritual energies and
Speaker 2: the body. Thetans have to be released through your spine.
Speaker 2: So the question is does the mythology make it work better?
Speaker 2: And once you apply it, think about yoga, you think
Speaker 2: about all of the other things in society where we
Speaker 2: tell people a story to get them to behave a
Speaker 2: certain way and the story is not true, but it
Speaker 2: is effective at healing that we're making them healthier, And
Speaker 2: what are the ethics of that? Because, for example, it
Speaker 2: is my understanding that studies has consistently found that placebos
Speaker 2: work better when they are expensive. Yeah, because you don't
Speaker 2: want to feel like you wasted your money. So the
Speaker 2: ethics of selling somebody a powder of ground up shark
Speaker 2: bones or something, and this is going to carry you
Speaker 2: anxiety and it's like, well, actually, people don't just buy
Speaker 2: it once, They buy it for years because they swear,
Speaker 2: they swear by it.
Speaker 1: It works.
Speaker 2: I would like to accuse those people of being thieves,
Speaker 2: But are they right?
Speaker 3: We should start making it not like shark bones and stuff,
Speaker 3: because sharks are endangered in some cases and it's bad,
Speaker 3: But like animals that we hate, we should make up
Speaker 3: stories about their bones and blood and stuff being good, Like, hey,
Speaker 3: round up mosquitoes are an aphrodisiac because like, who cares
Speaker 3: they kill a bunch of mosquitos? Or like an invasive
Speaker 3: species of like you know, like hey, the crowd of
Speaker 3: thorns starfish? You know they're invasive, but if you grind
Speaker 3: them up, it'll give you a boner. Like let's let's
Speaker 3: let's like, let's start making shitty animals the ones that
Speaker 3: we turn into medicine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think a lot of supplements are
Speaker 1: mostly sawdust. By the way, Like when they test what's
Speaker 1: actually in there, they're like, oh, this is.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, yeah, this is just things like saying because
Speaker 2: it's not regulated, that doesn't have to go through the FDA,
Speaker 2: and because it also doesn't do anything so who hears.
Speaker 2: But if you buy Saint John's Word or Jensing or
Speaker 2: any of that stuff, you'll often find that the amount
Speaker 2: in a pill is somewhere between ten percent or four
Speaker 2: hundred percent of what it says in the label because
Speaker 2: they're not being precise about it because you can't overdose
Speaker 2: on it because it's just just an herber or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's also just like medicine is a relatively news science.
Speaker 3: I know we think of it as being very old,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't that long ago that we were like
Speaker 3: cutting holes in people's skulls and thinking that would like
Speaker 3: take the demons.
Speaker 1: Out, and it did sometimes and.
Speaker 3: Sometimes trepending sometimes worked it's not to say, you know,
Speaker 3: like I don't think any of us, well I don't
Speaker 3: want to speak for anyone, but I don't think any
Speaker 3: of us believes that like medicine is bs. Like I think,
Speaker 3: you know, if your doctor is like, hey, you need
Speaker 3: treatment for this thing, you shouldn't be like yeah, right, jerk,
Speaker 3: Like there are like medicine. Modern medicine is pretty incredible
Speaker 3: in terms of how actually like we have actually figured
Speaker 3: out how certain proteins interlock with other proteins and that
Speaker 3: it affects your body. And that's incredible. But it's also
Speaker 3: I think there's this separation of like, all right, here's
Speaker 3: the real hard physic cold medicine, and then the brain
Speaker 3: the mind stuff, which is just kind of like you know,
Speaker 3: like hippie dippy brain stuff. It's not real. And I
Speaker 3: think that's I think that's a big problem. Like I
Speaker 3: think that a lot of things could be accomplished if
Speaker 3: we kind of didn't have this disconnect between like the
Speaker 3: body's health, the like the body and the brain, and
Speaker 3: this like separation of like, well, there's real medicine and
Speaker 3: then there's like you know, like just sort of mind
Speaker 3: over matter, you know, silly stuff. And I think combining
Speaker 3: the power of modern medical advancement and the understanding of
Speaker 3: how the brain impacts the body can help in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways, like you know, preventing like over medicalization
Speaker 3: of things, but also treatment of things that do need medicine,
Speaker 3: but could also use like the idea that you know,
Speaker 3: you treat just the thing that's happening in the body
Speaker 3: without addressing sort of the psychological impacts I think is
Speaker 3: kind of limited.
Speaker 2: I also think we have unrealistic expectations of medicine compared
Speaker 2: to where we are, but we think everything should be
Speaker 2: be able to have an instant diagnosis. Here's what it is,
Speaker 2: here's the pill that fixes it. Including things that are
Speaker 2: like well, I'm fatigued all the time. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: what else do you have going on your life? As like, wow,
Speaker 2: I work three jobs and I have a figure and
Speaker 2: I need you to give me a pill that will
Speaker 2: make my fatigue go away. Or you know this is
Speaker 2: Ask any therapist and they will have the patient. It's like,
Speaker 2: I'm depressed. I need the treatment for depression. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: when did your depression star Approximately, well, when my wife
Speaker 2: died and then my dog died six months later and
Speaker 2: then I lost my job because of my I was
Speaker 2: so sad about my wife dying and now I got
Speaker 2: kicked out of my apartment and it's like, Okay, your
Speaker 2: life is a disaster. You want a pill that will
Speaker 2: and I think that you know, it's it's stupid to
Speaker 2: say we have too much faith in science. It is
Speaker 2: unfair to ask a pill to fix that. You have
Speaker 2: a long rountain to climb of getting things back in
Speaker 2: your li but your body is telling you, you know, man,
Speaker 2: this sucks. It's not because your brain's producing too much
Speaker 2: of a chemicals because your life is a disaster. It
Speaker 2: just is. Your life is not as good as it
Speaker 2: was before, so it is part of it is. It
Speaker 2: is funny because you have part of the population who
Speaker 2: refuses to believe in science or vaccines, but then you
Speaker 2: have another part of the population that, for example, thought
Speaker 2: that the moment they invent a vaccine for a disease,
Speaker 2: that are just vanishes overnight. It's like, the truth is,
Speaker 2: these are inventions by humans. They're not magic. They're miraculous
Speaker 2: and since compared to what we were able to do
Speaker 2: three hundred years ago. But no, sometimes you're going to
Speaker 2: go to the doctor, and the doctor's going to say,
Speaker 2: we don't have a way to fix this yet, and
Speaker 2: usually patients do not take that as an answer. They
Speaker 2: demand a to walk out of their with a prescription,
Speaker 2: and lots of times they just gave you something to
Speaker 2: make you go right, because it's like, we don't know
Speaker 2: how to fix this yet. It's just that's the situation.
Speaker 3: I've literally like felt, oh man, I'm so fatigued. Am
Speaker 3: I sick? And then I realized it's nighttime, it's bedtime.
Speaker 3: I have to go to sleep. I'm like, oh god,
Speaker 3: am I coming down with something. It's like, well, no,
Speaker 3: it's midnight and I should go.
Speaker 1: To bed this nighttime fatigue disorder.
Speaker 2: And I did the normal thing where I looked at
Speaker 2: my phone for four hours after I went to bed,
Speaker 2: and I woke up the next morning feeling my crap,
Speaker 2: I'm coming down with something, right.
Speaker 1: Happy, All right, that's gonna do it for this week's
Speaker 1: weekly Zeitgeist. Please like and review the show if you like.
Speaker 1: The show means the world to Miles. He needs your validation.
Speaker 8: Folks.
Speaker 1: I hope you're having a great weekend and I will
Speaker 1: talk to you Monday. Bye.
Speaker 2: Stinging